A hacktivist is someone that use hacking techniques to protest against a government, political party or fights for a social cause. Based on my experience, a lot of hacktivist only post in social media, mainly on twitter to promote their cause using hacktivist operations.
You may notice them when they carry on DDOS attacks or defacements.
Where are hacktivists located and how they are organized?
Hacktivists can organize themselves in various forms, sometimes they are a small community where everyone know each other, and on the other hand, they can be a huge group where everyone can enlist and learn how to act as a hacktivist inside the group.
I have seen hacktivist groups promote their activity using twitter, with the hashtag operation #opnewblood in the case of Anonymous hacktivist group, in websites or blogs, managing IRC chats, clearnet and darkweb forums.
Popular hacktivist groups
Anonymous: The most famous hacktivist group of all times. They even got a film! They were born spontaneusly in 2003 at 4chan imageboard site, using the masks from V for Vendetta film, as a decentralized hacktivist group. Their main targets until now have been banks, Scientology church, ISIS terrorism and fascists.
They usually post youtube videos as call to action.
DD4BC: Hacktivist organization which stands for DDoS for Bitcoin. The organization started it’s threats on July 2014. Their threat activity consists on the extortion to businesses with threats of DDoS attacks. DD4BC is attacking primarily to financial sector, on currency exchanges and payment processing. They could be considered as cybercriminals rather than hacktivist because their main objective is to get money through extorsion.
Lizard Squad: Hacktivist group created at 2014 that did a lot of DDOS attacks, mainly to gaiming services.
Armada Collective: Hacktivist group that started to perform DDOS attacks in March 2016. As DD4BC did, they were claiming bitcoins to their targets by email, and if they weren't paid by the targeted company, they would perform the DDOS attack.
Lulzsec: Also named Lulz Security, they were responsible for highly relevant hacks, hacking entities as Sony, the CIA and the NASA.
Trending hacktivist operations
If you are curious about it, you can check some of the most relevant operation searching the following hacktags on twitter:
- oprodeo
- optrump
- opisis
- opKKK
- oppedohunt
- opchemtrails
- opwhales
- opserenashim
- opisrael
- opkillingbay
Hacktivism operations can change everyday, but with the ones above you may get an idea of it ;)
Also iniciatives as Wikileaks could be considered hacktivism, eventhough they don't consider themselves as hacktivists.
Here in steemit, there is also a user that could be considered as hacktivist: The Shadow Brokers. You can found more information about them on wikipedia.
Sources:
My own knowledge.
Techtarget http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/hacktivism
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizard_Squad
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lulz_SecurityAkamai https://blogs.akamai.com/2014/12/dd4bc-anatomy-of-a-bitcoin-extortion-campaign.htm
Cloudflare https://blog.cloudflare.com/empty-ddos-threats-meet-the-armada-collective/